


Dead Waters

by EveandJohnny



Series: Disruptions In The Province [1]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Ghosts, Multi, The October Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2020-11-27 15:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20950523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveandJohnny/pseuds/EveandJohnny
Summary: A young woman is approached by a ghost who tells her a bone-chilling secret: They have witnessed three murders. The site of the crimes is Lake Hain, an artificial body of water that was left in the wake of the end of coal mining south of Leipzig. Talking to ghosts is one thing for Bianca Kernberg - but having a ghost as accused murderer is a whole different level of complicated.





	1. Cover




	2. Chilling Encounters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As derogative as the story might seem occassionally, this is actually kind of a love letter, well, a letter of appreciation, towards my homeland. Our area has had mostly negative headlines - having the dirtiest village in Europe, people being removed from their homes by the dozen - but it's still where I grew up, where still a lot of people I love and cherish live, its streets I know inside out. I just want to put it on the map.
> 
> I put specific terms in the end notes but if there's anything still unclear please don't hesitate to ask!

If you wanted to describe the area south of Leipzig with two words, the ones that instantly spring to mind are: water and coal. And maybe Nazis. But then again which region in Saxony didn’t have them so that by now they seemed, unfortunately, mandatory.

But water and coal - they were as significant for this place as the Brandenburg Gate to Berlin or Big Ben to London. They were also tied to each other in a way hardly anything else here was. When the coal started its climb on the ladder of relevance, at some point beating onion cultivation for first place, it did so nearly ridiculously tiny. One of the first mining fields was located in what is now the heart of a small town called Borna. Provincial in many aspects, officials named the remaining hole, after the mining field had been closed and filled with water, the Big Pond. 

Though in the 1920s things quickly accelerated. What started in the late 19th century with fields not much bigger than a mouse hole transformed the entire area into a lunarscape with craters gaping between the towns and clouds of coal dust drifting overhead, creating a feeling of a possible apocalypse.

Er, hold on there for a second. That’s probably now my fantasy running just a little rampant here.

Of course, people still lived here in the height of the coal craze because the coal paid incredibly well (and because there was a wall enclosing the country). Many still longed for those days, despite the dirt and health issues, and grieved its factual end in the middle of the 1990s - also one of the contributing factors for those bloody Nazi bastards.

But people also to had to go, were forced to leave their villages so they could be sacrificed to the ever-hungry and never-stopping coal excavators.

_And here is where our story begins. _

*** 

I’ve just plopped down on the beach for a break after a bike tour around Lake Hain - sighing as my glasses decided to get fogged up again - and was about to take a big gulp from my water bottle when I felt a light, almost feathery, and ice cold touch on my bare shoulder. It was just the beginning of June yet climate change had come hard for us, the temperatures already surpassing 30°C.

I jumped, drawing a sharp breath and spilling some of the water onto my dress. Calming myself by inhaling deeply after the initial shock, I suddenly smelt a breeze of spring blossoms, some Muckefuck underneath it as well as faint heavy perfume I recognized from my great-grandparents’ house.

“I’ve waited so long for you” a soft yet determined voice sighed in my ear.

“Me?”

“Not you specifically. Someone I knew could definitely talk to me. Most can just feel me.” The cold aura shifted from my left to my right shoulder.

I was by no means shocked. I’ve had these encounters before. Once, as I had wandered through my old kindergarten and the mansion it was attached to when both had still been abandoned, I heard the whisper of an ancient sermon. I didn’t think too much of it as I knew there was a secret tunnel leading from the mansion to the church down in the neighbouring village.

“How long is ‘so long’?” I asked, inclining my head to the left. Talking to a ghost was always based on reading the room. If they weren’t hostile towards me why should I be it?

The ghost chuckled. “I had anticipated more... fear? Most people, as I said, can only feel me but even this usually suffices to let them go pale and flee the scene.” They hesitated for a second while I just waited for them to speak again. I knew there was more to come.

“But that makes it just much easier. It means that I’ve been roaming around this place for fifty years. When they started to fill the pit I was a bit annoyed but now I quite like the new lake. Much nicer view than the stripping shovels gorging through the landscape.”

Suddenly their tone changed drastically. “I’ve been roaming around here since my home was demolished. My family had lived there for nearly three hundred years and they managed to bulldoze it in just three. I didn’t want to leave, I understood those who had but I just couldn’t. So I hid in the house until the wrecking balls were at our door. When the first bang shook the wall I stepped from the chair. For a second, I was weightless, all my sorrows had vanished, I was free. When I looked back all that was left from me was a body dangling from the ceiling.”

Through the last sentences, the voice had wavered a little and at the word “ceiling” it nearly broke. I wish I could have touched them but that was the problem with ghosts: Only the elder ones, two-, three-hundred years and older, or those who lived in old houses were able to be seen, let alone be touched. Tangible ghosts were very rare and this one beside me was neither old enough nor in the right environment. Natural structures like lakes, even though man-made in this case, didn’t store as much magic as buildings so the ghosts had less to feed off.

As if to gather themselves, the voice coughed and now I could feel the cool breeze on my face, telling me that the ghost floated opposite of me. “But I’m straying. That’s not what I wanted to tell you, or, you know, anybody so urgently. No!” The voice dropped an octave and said, closer to my ear now “I’ve witnessed murders!”

A murder, though not very common, was nothing too out of the ordinary. But plural? Granted, sometimes there were multiple in, let’s say, a family drama. But the manner they had emphasized the word got me to prick up my ears. It sounded as if those were, well, _special_ murders.

“What does that mean?” I asked in a low voice. Suddenly the air around became a lot cooler, as if the ghost had embraced me. I shivered.

“That means that someone killed three people in the past fifty years. I don’t know the identity of either the victims or the murderer. One thing I know for sure, though: They were all murdered by a ghost.”

I opened my mouth to say something - only shut it a moment later when the scope of their words dawned on me. The cogs in my brain kicked into overdrive as I desperately tried to make sense of them. How could somebody who was already dead kill someone?

No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t think of a sensible, as little scary as possible solution. I looked up with the intention of looking the ghost in front of me into the non-existent eyes. _Rational thinking_, I told myself.

If I wanted to get any sensible solution here, I needed some facts first. Luckily, I had come straight from work so I carried my pocket calendar and a biro with me. I dug both up in my purse and clicked my tongue when I opened the calendar.

“So, uhm-“ I noticed that the ghost hadn’t told me their name yet.

They seemed to notice what I was getting at because they said “Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Andrea.”

“My pleasure, I’m Bianca.” I was about to extend a hand, reflexively, when I remembered that I probably wouldn’t get much more than a cold shiver up my arm. I shook my head to revert back to the most urgent task at hand. “So, Andrea, when did you see those murders and where?”

“The first happened 1993, shortly before they dismantled the last stripping shovel, about where the headland is today. The victim was a young coal miner. The officials declared it an accident.”

I scrunched my nose as I scribbled down the information. “But why are you so sure about it being a murder? Can ghosts see each other better than I see you?”

“That’s the case. But I suppose that even you would have seen this guy. Besides, the part that buried the poor lad would have never fallen the way it had. Somebody helped to make that happen.”

I wrote that down and reviewed the facts for a second before I nodded. “What about the rest?”

“The next victim was one of the workers responsible for flooding the lake in 1999, the year this project had started. He belonged to the LMBV; I saw their logo on his jacket after he had been drowned in the rushing downpour from one of the big inflow tubes. And the last one happened 2008, when they were building the first houses and chalets. Both those events were considered accidents as well. But I know better because I saw that someone pushed the worker into the water and held his head under water, and I saw that the third didn’t trip when he fell into the concrete filled hole but was pushed when everyone else had gone off to their lunch break.”

My hand had become a little cramped as I jotted down their words in my self-invented shorthand. That was a lot to think about but two conspicuities were already evident: all murders had happened in the light of day and all victims were concerned with the lake in one way or the other.

By now, things had settled around the lake. Tourism wasn’t yet thriving put surely picking up pace; a new motorway was under construction right beside it which would make accessibility even easier. And two houses had been built for delinquent teenagers and young adults to reintegrate them into society. But while the lake had nearly reached its status quo, all this also meant even more possible victims: people who worked in tourism, tourists themselves, the teenagers.

My ears twitched, a subconscious habit of mine when something caught my attention. I just needed to confirm one more thing. “So Andrea, you are absolutely sure about the felon being a ghost? It couldn’t have been, well, a colleague of the miner who had then worked at flooding the lake and finally in the construction company of the chalets?” This career was by no means impossible, breaks and detours in East Germans’ lives were the rule and not the exception.

“A hundred percent not a living person. While more solid than I am, they had a pearly aura around them and I could still see through them. Judging by their clothing, they have been dead for more than 200 years if I remember that correctly from our history lessons.”

Uh-oh. A century old ghost, going around the lake killing people. The murders had been six and eleven years apart, the last had been ten years ago. At first glance there was no pattern, but as Andrea had said: all murders had happened shortly before or after major turning points in the history of the lake and therewith the whole area.

Andrea wouldn’t have told me this if they didn’t want the crimes to be solved. But I could never do this on my own. My only ability was sensing and talking to ghost. To catch one, I needed back-up. And unfortunately, I knew where I would get that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explanations:  
-Borna - county town of the Leipzig district  
-Lake Hain (Hainer See) - named after the village Hain that was, along with several others, demolished to mine brown coal  
-LMBV/Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbauverwaltungsgesellschaft - company to manage and redevelop the by coal   
mining affected areas in Lusatia (South Eastern Brandenburg/North Eastern Saxony) and Central Germany (tri-border area   
between Leipzig, Halle and Gera)


	3. Set The Gears Into Motion

From the times when I had still read the newspaper with the unsettling abundance of colourful pictures and nauseating sensational headlines, I remembered an article where they were investigating rumours about a special magical force in the BKA. If I hadn’t been able to be contacted by ghosts I would have never believed that - much like my family who accused them of spewing appallingly wrong information once again.

But because the supernatural world had previously knocked on my door a few times, figuratively spoken, I trusted the article, cut it out and hid it in my diary.

I was back home, sitting cross-legged on my bed and a cup of iced tea in hands, and tried to research the Abteilung KDA, as the department was called in the article. Information were sparse, I basically only found the archived report whose physical copy I balanced on my left knee. Mmpf, I really had to grin and bear with calling our local police station. Hopefully they wouldn’t think of me as a madwoman wasting their oh so precious time. After all, this was Saxonian province; you couldn’t be too sure about them knowing what was going on in the upper authorities.

“Police department Borna, Police Seargant Denker speaking” said a bored voice at the other end of the line after it had rung endlessly.

I rolled my eyes. This was exactly what I had expected. Anyway, I had to push through this. “My name is Bianca Kernberg, I have to report a case for the Abteilung Komplexe und diffuse Angelegenheiten. There are ghosts involved” I said, hoping that my words raised the necessary red flags for Mr Denker. His name couldn’t be more far from the truth if you asked me.

There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. „Young lady, you’re lucky that I have my funny day today. So I’m not going to go after your joking call. Bianca Kernberg, sounds like a fake name to me. But I’ll leave it at that. Ghosts. komplexe und diffuse Angelegenheiten. Honestly!“ He huffed amused.

I feared my eyes got stuck in their sockets - I rolled them that hard. I’m repeating myself, but this is exactly how I envisioned this talk to go. A middle-aged male police officer not taking me seriously and even subtly threatening me with consequences. One of the many reasons the police ranked second on the list of authorities I distrusted the most. First place was reserved for the military.

I was about to hang up without saying goodbye when I heard a commotion on Mr.K Denker’s side. There was a muffled question, a loud rustle that rang in my ear as he apparently covered the receiver; still, I heard a quick and heated discussion. Another rustle, and Mr Denker was on the phone again.

“Mrs Kernberg? Could you, uhm, could you give me all the details you have about the incident? We will, of course, transfer the information to the appropriate department.” His voice had made a turn of 180°, suddenly sounding very courteous and eager.

I was taken aback by this change of his mood but I suspected that whoever was with him on duty today had picked up the last words he had said and their brain had reacted quicker than Mr Denker’s (really, fate had been on its overly funny stride when it send him to the police with _this_ name).

After having given him all I knew from Andrea he thanked me and hung up without apologizing for his patronizing behaviour earlier. I shook my head but I least I had done what I could. Now it was the police’ turn to put into motion whatever procedures they had for this.

***

Later that afternoon my phone buzzed with a Meckenheim number. I accepted the call, already guessing the caller. One of the KDA officers (according to the article it was the only one) sat in Meckenheim, North Rhine-Westphalia. Before I had read the article again, I didn’t even know this place existed. In return, I supposed, the officer also didn’t know the town where I lived.

“Kernberg?” I asked, pulling my calendar and pen to me.

“Mrs Kernberg, my name is Tobias Winter. The police department in Borna contacted us, though apparently you were already aware of the KDA. May I know how?”

I caught myself before I chuckled into the phone. They were top-secret, most certainly, but everything top-secret is also top interesting for the public. I didn’t say that, of course, instead I explained “I remembered the article from the newspaper with the four big letters and because, as I told your colleagues, I can talk to ghosts the existence of such an division made sense to me.”

Winter on the other end made thinking noises, pained ones, as if the memory of that article was not the fondest one he had. Then he said “Mmh, I see. Since you likewise have a supernatural secret to keep I don’t have to remind you of absolute discretion. Now, concerning your report: Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately, as there is no immediate victim to lament and all the crime scenes have drastically changed we are unable to follow this case. Our hands are tied, legally spoken. I’m very sorry.” The young man, judging from his voice he was not that much older than me, seemed to be genuinely sorry that he couldn’t help me.

I sighed. “I thought so much. You only have my word that the single source, a fifty year old ghost living in a lake, is reliable. I can just say again that this is absolutely true. Though I suppose that you only react when there’s imminent danger looming.”

Winter graunched his teeth. “I’m not going to comment this. Anyway, thank you again for your trust. But I hope that we’re not going to speak again about this matter. I mean, I just want the supernatural world to not go around and kill more people.”

I nodded before I realized that he couldn’t see this. “Sensible enough. Well then, take care, Mr Winter.”

“You too, goodbye.” With that he hung up.

For another second, I stared at my phone, then I decided to save his number just in case. I got up from the bed to fetch a folder from my desk to put away all the information I had collected so far. I hesitated for a second, then got down on my knees, elbows resting on my bed, as I researched the earlier accidents and possible articles about them. Why hadn’t I done that much earlier?

***

I shut my laptop after an intense gaming session and looked at the clock over my desk. Already well past midnight. But that wasn’t too worrisome, I had tomorrow, I mean today, off. As I headed to the bathroom I switched on the radio to hear what I had missed in the last four hours.

After brushing my teeth and combing my hair I came back just to catch the half hour news. When they mentioned the motorway beside the lake I stilled.

“As only known for a couple of hours, an accident occurred on the construction side of the new A72 between the planned junctions Espenhain and Rötha this morning. A 57-year-old worker was killed when a bulldozer lost its footing on one of the steep verges. The company charged with building the motorway expressed their condolences towards the family and emphasized that this was a one-time event. Construction will resume next week to give the victim’s colleagues time to seek professional help.”

I looked to my right as if someone was standing there, eyebrows raised and lips pursed, and shrugged. Now what, Mr Winter? There you had your immediate victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explanations:  
-Appalling newspaper - BILD Zeitung. Don't read it if you don't want to ruin your day  
-BKA/Bundeskriminalamt - Federal Criminal Police Office, responsible for federal investigations in Germany  
-Denker - thinker  
-Espenhain - village belonging to Rötha, the coal mining field and the affiliated chemial processing factory were  
responsible for "Europe's dirtiest village" Mölbis  
-KDA/Komplexe und diffuse Angelegenheiten - Department for Complex and Unspecific Matters, the German Folly  
-Rötha - small town north of Lake Hain
> 
> Also, what bugs me about the name of the novella: I've never heard the term "October man" in German before. Never. Did you?


	4. The Charm Of Eastern Germany

I woke up to a dull thud. When I peeked over the edge of my bed I saw my phone buzzing on the floor. The vibrating mode had sent it off my nightstand. I sighed, my sigh changing halfway into a yawn, and picked up the phone. Oh look, it was Winter calling again.

“Good morning”, I said, stifling another yawn. I hadn’t paid attention to the time on my display so I didn’t know how early or late it was. I just hoped I hadn’t slept in too much and it was already past noon or something.

“Good morning”, Winter said, sounding a little exasperated. He seemed to be somewhat away from the phone and I could hear a constant woosh, as well as the faint sound of a turn signal. “Did I wake you?”

I shook my head to quicken the waking-up process. “Well, yeah. How late is it?”

“Shortly after nine a.m. I know I’ve said that I hoped to not have the need to call you again but here we are now. Have you heard about the accident on the construction side?”

“Yeah I have. It’s really tragic.” After a brief pause to indicate that I was actually touched by it I said “And now you’ve come to the conclusion, after what I’ve told you, that it’s not been an accident.“ I had gotten up and walked into the kitchen to pour me a bowl of cereal. I always needed food and music to wake up. But as I was on the phone the radio had to wait until we were done.

“That was one contributing factor. But the local police also found something, well, peculiar at the site of the accident. A dagger that is nearly four hundred years old. As all archaeological excavations have been concluded months ago they reckon it’s been left from the person that manipulated the bulldozer.” Another turn signal and a honk as answer.

“I see. Are you driving?“ I asked before eating a spoonful of cereal.

“Yeah, we are. Well, he is” a cheery female voice said suddenly.

“Uhm, that is my colleague Vanessa Sommer” Winter introduced us.

“Hello!”

“Hello”, I replied less enthusiastically but only because I’d just woken up. She sounded friendly enough, actually quite nice, but she was a police woman so a no-go for me.

“That’s why I called you” Winter interrupted my thoughts. “We’ve just passed Erfurt and the GPS says that we will be in Kahnsdorf in a little under two hours. This is the closest village to the lake, isn’t it?”

I was a bit astounded by that question. Hadn’t he taken a look on a map before getting into the car? “Uh, yes, it’s right beside it. I suppose you’ll stay here for a few days?”

“Oh yeah, we will. As long as it takes for us to solve the case. I’ve never been to East Germany so I hope I get so see a bit of it.” Sommer’s voice didn’t hint that she was about to deal with ghosts and maybe even more abstruse shit; it sounded more like excitedly looking forward to a vacation.

“I guess it’s interesting for someone who hasn’t been here before. A lot has changed for the better in the last thirty years. A lot less air pollution, more greenery and so on” I said, putting my empty bowl in the sink and filling it with water.

I heard a sigh, then Winter said “That’s not what we’re going to be there for, though. We have work to do. Mrs Kernberg, can you meet us at the Ferienapartments Hainer See in Kahnsdorf at twelve?”

I shrugged and answered “Sure, I’ll be there.”

“Wonderful. Thank you so much for your help” Sommer piped up. Then the connection was cut without a farewell.

I was a bit piqued by that at first but then I realized, as I was tracing their route, that they must be beyond Stadtroda by now where cell reception was sparse to non-existent. I had sometimes noticed that when I still studied in Jena, sat on the train and my grandma had tried to call me.

***

Kahnsdorf was a small village, about 540 inhabitants. But apparently big and important enough to call a lengthy Wikipedia entry its own. According to that, it was here where Friedrich Schiller’s life (exactly, uber poet Goethe’s Weimar writing companion) took a turn to the better and he was allegedly inspired to write his famous Ode to Joy by a friendly encounter he had made here.

Though nothing was joyful when we arrived as we were greeted by the stench of a biogas plant smack at the village limits. I was not sure if this truly was the first impression authorities wanted tourists to have. But as I looked outside the passenger window, past the plant, I caught a glimpse of deep turquoise water glittering in the merciless sun so maybe the plant wasn’t half that bad.

We had had the air con cranked up high, at least until a few minutes ago. Then Tobi had said that we had to dry the air con before we could park. So he switched it off. Immediately, I was sweaty again and now the stink of the biogas was joined by the reek of the coolant.

I scrunched my nose and hoped we would reach the guesthouse soon because I was also terribly starving. While Tobi had been prepared with several sandwiches stuffed with eggs, ham, and salami, garnished with lettuce and tomatoes, I had just been able to grab a few protein bars when he had rung the bell this morning at a quarter to six. And even though he had generously donated one of the sandwiches to me it had not been enough to compensate my lack of breakfast.

Tobi made a sudden sharp turn to the right onto a winding street that was dominated by cranes jutting into the sky. The right side of the street was bordered by new houses built right at the water line, all of them had their own jetty and the odd boat moored to them. The left side was barren, just shrubs and tall grass, except for a fee-based parking lot and an enclosed area for boats on trailers.

The people who lived here had money. That was obvious. Sports cars and SUVs stood in every other driveway, the houses had several floors and I’d bet my hopefully sumptuous lunch that just the premises right at the lake had been hella expensive.

As we followed the street, I caught a better view on the lake through a big gap between two houses. A marina sat on the clear water, and on the other side of the lake a couple of small single room huts poked through the bushes on the banks. More undeveloped sites on the left side, but beyond that rose the old part of the village. The patched-up roofs of several farms shimmered in the sun and I even spotted a restored half-timbered house. But soon it was hidden again from view by a long trail of trees.

The GPS finally announced the redeeming words “You have reached your destination” and I would have nearly kissed the AI voice for saving me. I peered through the windscreen over an already dry-looking hedge as Tobi parked. I had seen so many fancy houses on that seemingly endless street that were advertised as guesthouses but of course we had to be placed into the simplest accommodation because it was paid by the federal state.

(“Taxes” I heard Förstner say in my memory when I had tried to squeeze a more comfortable chair for my office out of him. “We are paid by people’s hard earned tax money. We cannot go round wasting it on such frolics.” Now I wouldn’t say that less back pain was decadent in any way, nor was it expensive, but I had just shut my mouth and nodded, without reminding him of the Black Book published by the Taxpayers Federation. They recorded a lot more ludicrous cases of boondoggle than my new office chair. And anyway, just a few months later, the whole headquarter got new desks that were height-adjustable.)

The “guesthouse” was a rather bleak looking flat-roofed apartment building in a dirty white with open staircases on each side of it. I counted six doors on every floor, all endowed with a bull’s eye window to give it a nautical touch, though in my opinion a somewhat flimsy one. Apparently, all apartments were overlooking the lake, so at least something positive to record here, where more chalets sat on the opposite banks and several sailing boats were out in action.

But all this became redundant when I suddenly spotted the Café Laguna just a few metres down the street. “Hey Tobi”, I said keeping my eyes glued on the café sign. “Why don’t you go and settle everything with the landlord while I grab us a bite to eat?”

“Can this not wait for another half an hour? Then we’re going to meet Mrs. Kernberg and can have our briefing over lunch.”

I groaned and pleadingly looked at him but he just shook his head firmly. “Fine” I mumbled and followed him with my bag towards the building.

***

I sighed happily and full of gree when the waitress arrived with my plate. Mmh, a steak au four. I’ve never heard of it before but a pork steak topped with ragout and scalloped with cheese sounded too good to be true so I had to try it. Tobi had opted for zander with a baked potato. Mrs Kernberg, however, seemed to be a vegetarian as she had ordered gnocchi in spinach sauce and had eyed us judgingly when we had placed our orders.

She was a woman in her late twenties, of average height and soft around the edges, with long brown hair tied up into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her most prominent features were her glasses and a long scar that reached from the middle of her right eyebrow up to the hairline at her temple.

Now that the most urgent matter was out of the way, the food, we could deal with what we’d actually come here for.

Tobi reread the notes in which he had condensed what we knew from the archived files about the area. The originals were still safely stored in Meckenheim. We had just gotten a few copies before we had departed this morning.

Which I was very happy about though I’d never say that out loud. Meckenheim would never live up to Trier, not in a million years.

He cast one last glance on his pad, then he looked to Mrs. Kernberg. “How much do you know about the supernatural world here in the area?”

She shrugged. “Apart from the odd encounter with ghosts, not much.”

“How many of those encounters did you have so far?” I asked.

She looked to the ceiling as if the answer was written up there, tongue sticking out a little bit between her plump red lips. Cute, I thought before I caught myself. She was a witness and taking an interest in witnesses, apart from the professional one, was a really bad idea.

“Four, I suppose.”

Tobi examined her with raised eyebrows. “You suppose?”

She writhed her hands and shrugged again when she said “Well, I don’t know if one of my imaginary childhood friends hadn’t been an actual ghost. I had many of them, imaginary friends I mean. But four I can definitely recall as not imaginary.”

“Where did you meet them and whose ghosts did you see?” I asked before taking another bite of my steak. Whoever had had the idea of putting ragout on a steak deserved a Michelin star, maybe even the Nobel peace prize.

Suddenly I felt a vigorous pat on my thigh under the table and I realized that I had taken the wheel in this conversation even though Tobi was the more experienced police officer, at least concerning KDA cases.

Mrs. Kernberg however hadn’t noticed it, she unfazed started telling her story. It included prayers in an abandoned mansion, the woeful bemoanings of a long dead teacher who had to spend the rest of his ghostly life in the basement of his (and her) old school, a poltergeist harassing people in a town hall, and a colonel of a long-gone carabineer regiment bellowing orders in former barracks that now housed the district office. She said she had to silently endure his martial commands while waiting for picking up her drivers license.

After my excursion to leadership, Tobi took over again. “And what do you know about genii locorum?”

“I…’ve heard of them in my Latin course in school?” Her whole face was a question mark.

“But not in local folklore?” Tobi’s voice sounded sly as he leaned forward to thoroughly examine her body language.

She shook her head. “No, actually I have to admit that I’m not really aware of any myths here. But maybe I’m just too ignorant. You should ask my grandpa about it, he’s a local historian but also collects myths and legends. Like the Brothers Grimm.”

“We already know that a genius loci for the river Pleiße still exists. We need a way to find her.”

“Mmh.” Mrs. Kernberg slowly nodded. “As I said, you have to ask my grandpa about that.” She pulled a calendar out of her purse, ripped a page out, and scribbled down a name, address, and phone number. “Here, that’s how you can find him. I hope you can read my handwriting. Tell him you have the information from me.”

I pulled the clipping towards me: Paul Arno Rossbusch, Bahnhofsstraße 56, Regis-Breitingen.

“Though it’s better you call him first. Even though he’s a pensioner he’s hardly home. Always out, always busy. He used to be a reporter for the local newspaper.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“If we have more questions we will contact you” Tobi said and shook her hand as she got up to leave.

***

Police officer Engstädt was a lanky, tall, and scared looking guy in his mid-forties. The frightened gaze didn’t leave his face when he smilingly shook our hands over at the crime scene tape so I reckoned this was his resting face. He still looked young - I knew his age as The Chief had previously informed us about our contact person here - though it wasn’t clear if it was despite or because the goatee he was sporting.

“When the inspector told me about you guys I thought it was a joke. I thought magic was just for the books like, you know, Harry Potter” he said with a high voice.

Tobi and I exchanged a glance. Yeah, Engstädt looked like someone who wanted to be younger than he actually was.

It hadn’t rained in weeks, so the construction site was bone-dry and our shoes were immediately dusted with sand and yellowish-grey soil. We we’re drawing nearer to a big tent that had been erected where the side made a sweeping left turn, nestling right at the edge towards Lake Hain. The lake lay on the left side, mostly hidden behind trees, a stark contrast to the never-ending traffic stream on our right side.

The A72 was built to connect Hof in Upper Franconia with Leipzig, and to relieve the B95 from traffic as well as all villages the road passed through. At the moment, it was still the most important vein in the area as the motorway was only finished up until Borna, a few kilometres to the south.

When we reached the crime scene I caught yet another look on the lake and for a moment I forgot why we were actually here. For the first time, I could take in its whole size as it stretched out beneath my feet. On the horizon, the only remaining coal power plant in the area puffed fluffy clouds into crystal clear sky. I didn’t even hear the busy road behind me anymore.

Then I looked down and realized how dangerously close I was standing to the edge. All the calmness I had previously felt hurriedly left my body to be replaced by a pulsating horror. I hated heights.

Instinctively, I took a step back, wondering why on earth accidents like this one didn’t happen all the time. Even without the “help” of a rampant ghost. How could anything have a grip here?

Tobi had already vanished into the white tent that’d been erected around the crime scene. I took a deep breath, shaking the goosebumps from off my arms, only to to feel another wave of shock creeping down my spine. The tent sat right at the edge, a gust of wind shaking it dangerously. I closed my eyes, sent a quick prayer to the Gods of tent stability, and entered it. Inside it was stuffy and I already felt my hair sticking to my neck. Tobi was down on his knees, hands pressed on either side of sander marks. I supposed that the bulldozer had lost its ground here.

“Terrible thing” Engstädt commented beside me. “The body was found at the foot of the slope, squashed beneath the machine. Luckily I hadn’t been FRU, the colleagues are still receiving trauma treatment” he said matter-of-factly.

I shivered again. I hadn’t even thought about that possibility even though it was the most likely course of events.

We watched Tobi nearly kissing the earth until he waved me towards him without looking up.

“Vanessa, what do you feel?” he asked.

I knelt beside him and lowered my head. A sudden rage plunged through me, red-hot and sizzling, but there was also the crinkle of old but fine and expensive garments. Suddenly a hair-raising noise as something metallic got stuck between gears. I recalled the memory for a second before I told him.

“Mmh, interesting. I hadn’t felt the rage. As it is unlikely for you to be enraged at the moment I suppose that this is a feeling left by the murderer. I’ve never heard of that before.” He pulled his notepad out and scribbled a few lines. “How do you imagine the suspect to look like?”

I shot him a look. “Isn’t it a bit to early to talk about that?”

He pondered that for a moment before he said “Still, tell me. Just a quick mental sketch.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the vestigia, waiting for an involuntary image to form in my head. “He’s…not that tall. He wears a wig, a white one, like English judges. His clothing is broquate, knickerbockers, heeled shoes.” My eyes shot open. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Considering that we might be talking about ghosts – it does.” He pushed himself up and lend me a hand.

I let myself be pulled up. “Still, a better way to find him is to ask about his motif” I objected.

“That would have been my next move” Tobi countered as we walked out of the tent over to a smaller one, further away from the edge, where the forensics had collected the evidence before sending them out. In the middle stood a wobbly white plastic table with the most tangible piece of evidence – the dagger. It was wrapped into a sealable plastic bag. We both leaned forward to have a good look on it. It was maybe twenty centimetres long, had a curved blade and its hilt was made of finely carved dark wood. I was not an expert of any sorts, but it looked expensive and indeed very, very old. The faded wood spoke of long years of use and the blade looked blunt. Bearing in mind that it had been found between the gears driving the bulldozer tracks it was in a remarkably good condition, though.

I saw a glimmer of hope in Tobi’s eyes as he asked “Any chance of fingerprints?” but the crime scene tech in charge shook his head before he could even ask the entire question. The glimmer died and Tobi shrugged. “Anything else?”

Another headshake.

We both nodded and exited the tent again.

“So, what’s next?” I asked as we waved to the Engstädt and walked back to the car.

“Time for a visit with Mr Rossbusch, I suppose. But before we should try to contact the genius loci.”

“Do you think they’d be invited by wine?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe onions?”

I shot him a look with raised eyebrows.

“What? Before they mined coal they cultivated onions here big time. But I guess better not. A nice letter and a box of truffels should suffice.” He turned back and called “Engstädt, where’s the next supermarket?”

“In Espenhain, on the right side next to the gas station!” Officer Engstädt shouted back.

“Thank you!” He turned to me and grinned.

***

After we had gotten the chocolate and a few things we needed for dinner tonight (I sometimes still dreamt of the lamb he’d made the first time we’d cooked together) we looked for the best car-accessible point of the Pleiße. Tobi found a hiding spot beneath bushes right at the banks where he deposited the large Lindt box and a request for a call back. It had worked with Kelly, why not with that river god as well?

He got back into the car. I had already typed Rossbusch’s address into the GPS.

“How long do you think it’ll take them to find the message?”

He shrugged. “Hopefully, they’ll call back tonight so we can meet tomorrow. I’d like to get the entire investigation over as quick as possible.”

“My, I actually like it here. But yeah, better not give our murderer another chance.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

He started the engine and while he was driving out of the hamlet called Gaulis I suddenly remembered something. “Weren’t we supposed to call Rossbusch to check if he’s home?”

Tobi shook his head. “Better not give him a reason to escape from us. And if we won’t meet him we can still call.” With that he sped on.


	5. The Horrors Of War

When the door buzzed, I suddenly felt it: herbal liqueur, heavy machines stomping, a dust of coal that triggered a cough even though the air was as clean and fresh as a daisy.

A signare.

As I had noticed in my first KDA case, I was remarkably sensitive for magical traces even though I had never had anything to do with it beforehand. Thanks to that and the training I had received by now, I knew instinctively what was about to come. I pulled Tobi, whose frown told me that he had reached the same conclusion, behind my back and opened the door.

A sizzling werelight shot out of the door with a blazing white train trailing behind it. It stopped midway hovering above the weedfree pavement before it suddenly made a sharp beeline and came racing towards us.

I watched in horror - I was lucky if my werelights lasted longer than a minute and shone as bright as a flashlight - but then my view was blocked because Tobi yanked me back and stepped in front of me. A heartbeat later, the feisty werelight burst into a thousand sparks. I took a deep breath.

Tobi turned to me. “You okay?”

I exhaled relieved. “Thank you, yes. What about you?”

He just nodded and rounded the still open door. As I followed him I saw an elderly man now standing in the doorway, a rogueish smile gleaming in his piercing blue eyes. He might have been around eighty, judging by the crowfeet around those eyes and the many creases around his mouth that was curled upwards in one corner. His hair, though, was mostly still black. While my eighty-three-year-old grandpa needed a wheeled walker all the time, the man in front of us didn’t; on the contrary, his stance was square and precise, despite the protruding belly, as if he’d been in the military before retiring.

“Paul Arno Rossbusch?” Tobi asked in a professional tone, though I heard a certain edge of wariness in his voice. He tried to make it not too obvious but I felt how he erected a shielding spell in front of him.

The man nodded. “The one and only.” He huffed and scrutinized Tobi from head to toe, amused by something I couldn’t place. Maybe he knew that Tobi’s shield was useless against his repertoire.

Tobi and I held up our ID’s. While I was a little impressed with his skills, I definitely couldn’t let slide _how _he had demonstrated them. “You are aware, Mr Rossbusch, that your werelight classifies as attack on enforcement officers? That can earn you a jail term from three months up to five years. I guess that would not be the way you want to spend the rest of your pension” I said sharply.

Rossbusch just waved. “Nah, it was merely a test. Bianca had called and said that the wizard police was on their way.”

We exchanged a glance. He certainly was a practitioner himself, why did he use incorrect terminology?

“So you call yourself a wizard?” Tobi asked slyly?

He laughed. “God forbid! I share a certain dislike for the police with my granddaughter, is all. But please, come in. There are no practitioners around here anymore.”

We followed him into a typical GDR single-family house, the one we had seen countless identical times since leaving the A4 in Schmölln this morning. I supposed that the uninspired grey plastering was still original.

Inside, the vestibule was already crowded with only three people standing in it, before we proceded through the hall and then into the kitchen. Its floor was tiled in a black and white checkerboard pattern, footworn but polished, and the cupboard fronts were brown and a faded white, dulled by grease and dust and years of use.

“Do you want a coffee?” Rossbusch asked and turned to a coffee brewer, aside from the ceramic glass cooktop the only new-looking appliance here.

“Yes, thank you” we said simultaneously, then chuckled both. Before joining the KDA I would have said “Jinxed” to this but now I was more careful because I could actually get jinxed.

While the brewer was fizzling, Rossbusch leaned against the countertop and crossed his arms. “Bianca was reluctant to tell me what exactly brings you here, so please enlighten me.”

Tobi stood up straight, scraping together all possible inches, but he was still half a head shorter than Rossbusch. Positioning his thumbs in the belt loops of his cargo pants, he said “We are investigating the incident on the A72 construction side. Witnesses say that there was a supernatural force involved.”

“A supernatural force!” Rossbusch huffed. “What kind of supernatural is that supposed to be?”

“Actually, we are the ones asking questions” I said with a raised eyebrow.

Tobi lifted his right hand just a bit to shush me. “My colleague’s actually right but because you might have useful information for us I’m gonna tell you. The witness said something about ghosts.”

Immediately, Rossbusch’s brow furrowed. “Ghosts? There? I don’t know about that. And if, then they are either not recorded or haven’t been ghosts for long. The only ghosts that I know of walk abroad in Peche, Geitn, Grimme, and Flößberch. But maybe that one stayed under the radar? Since my time in Flößberch, I’m out of sorts with ghosts. They’re nothing but trouble.” He snuffled disparagingly.

I had pulled out my notepad to keep track but stumbled over the places he’d named. “Uhm, sorry, could you repeat the towns?” I asked, still trying to make sense of the names.

He eyed me for long moment before said with a sneer “You’re not local, aren’t you. Pardon my Saxonian dialect. The official names are Pegau, Geithain, Grimma, and Flößberg, young lady.”

“Don’t call me ‘young lady’” I muttered grouchily. Those places I faintly<strike></strike> recognised from the map I had studied while we’d been driving to Rossbusch’s place.

“What happened in Flößberg?” Tobi asked in a tone that raised my hackles. It sounded as if he knew of something I didn’t.

Rossbusch seemed to have noticed that, too, because when I saw his cold stare another shiver ran down my spine. I hoped that Tobi knew what he was doing.

Just in that moment the coffee brewer beeped, and Rossbusch turned to fill us all a cup. After having taken a long sip, despite the coffee being scaldingly hot, he finally said “Flößberg was my Ettersberg. Did you know that Flößberg was a subcamp to Buchenwald? So you bet your ass that they did the exact same thing. Originally, I’m from Leipzig, taught by Wilhelm August Großmann, esteemed publisher and one of the most flamboyant practitioners of the 1920s -”

A shell-shocked “The what?” slipped from my lips before I could stop myself. If he had been a young man in the 1920s he shouldn’t be alive anymore.

Rossbusch directed his cold stare at me now. “I don’t like to be interrupted” he hissed.

I shrunk under his gaze and apoligizingly said “Sorry! Go on, please.”

He cleared his throat and resumed as if I’d never interrupted him. “We met at the St. Thomas Choir. I was a pupil, just about fifteen, and he was the half-brother of our cantor Karl Straube. They disliked each other passionately, Straube was one of the first to enter the NSDAP while Wilhelm, considerably younger than Straube, was more or less openly homosexual and a big fan of jazz music. I realized pretty quickly that Wilhelm was interested in me in a way that surpassed friendliness. Today he’d be seen as a pedophile, and I agree on that now. But back then I was flattered and, yes, later on also hopelessly in love with him.”

He took another sip from his coffee. I noticed that I’d held my breath and inhaled needily.

Rossbusch continued. “He showed me what he knew which was more than I could have ever dreamt of. He was a registered practitioner - that brought about his downfall. But I guess that Straube had his fare share in his brother’s deportation by ratting him out to the authorities in 1932. He was sentenced to eight years in gaol before being deported to Auschwitz. It’s not recorded what happened afterwards but I guess he was gassed upon arrival. I doubt that he was 'strong enough’ to carry out any work.”

He paused again and stayed quiet for a long time, his face a mask of unfathomable grief. I tried my best to keep my professional façade up but internally I was shaking. I wondered what had happened to Rossbusch.

After another stretch of silence he finally spoke again. “I was spared because I fled Leipzig right after Hitler’s rise to power and hid with my parents who had a farm somewhere in the countryside. Still, they found me in '44 and deported me to Flößberg, for both being gay and a practitioner. They had offered me redemption by joining the army. But I refused. Because Ettersberg was bursting at the seams, and Flößberg was, as I said, a subcamp I was sent there. I guess that this saved my life. This and the fairies populating the forest. I’d strayed there while working on train tracks, and only emerged a few days before the camp was closed and we were all deported back to Weimar until the Allies freed the camp. The Folly raid had already happened, otherwise they might have killed me as well.”

He shrugged. I shot Tobi a glance. The Folly was the British version of the KDA, led by Thomas Nightingale. He and his decision to train an apprentice were basically the reason why Tobi and I were standing here. By having an apprentice, Nightingale had broken a treaty between Germany and Great Britain. I was not too mad about it as it gave me the chance to become a practitioner myself. And I hoped that one day I would meet Nightingale and Peter. And if it was just to ask what exactly had happened in Buchenwald. The concentration camp that I had visited during my school time was Natzweiler-Struthof near Natzwiller in France.

I wondered why he had spoken so freely about his trauma when he had admitted earlier that he didn’t think too highly of us. But I realized that we were, beside his granddaughter, the only people he could disclose his true identity to. From what I knew, the Director had been the only registered practitioner for a long time. That’s why she’d been chosen as head of our Department. I suspected that Rossbusch was unregistered, despite some secret decrees on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War that required well-trained practitioners. Maybe he’d pledged himself to never serve an authoritarian regime after his experiences under Nazi rule.

“This is truly heartbreaking” Tobi acknowledged after some moments of reflection, “But I fear that we have to establish you as an unregistered practitioner. Usually, this is followed up by severe consequences for the suspect, especially when having gone unnoticed for so long, but maybe, considering the traumatic events in your early life a reprimand will suffice. That’s not our decision to make, though. Now back to the reason we’re actually here for.”

I bumped his shoulder with mine and gave him a long look. That man had just spilled his heart out, was probably right back in the camp after having torn his scarred wounds open for us, and Tobi wanted to go back to business just like that?

One of his eyebrows shot up, asking what I wanted from him, and I jerked my head sideways towards Rossbusch who just in that moment broke his mug because he’d held it too tight.

We both jumped while Rossbusch, muttering “sorry” under his breath, cast a cleaning spell. The splinters reassembled in the air between us until the mug was perfectly whole again.

“Err, Mr Rossbusch, what I actually meant to say is: If you see yourself able I would like to ask you one more question about the ghosts that you talked about. Maybe one of them turns out to be our suspect after all” Tobi asked more gently now.

Rossbusch chuckled. “I highly doubt that. But sure, I if it makes you happy I can tell you.” He refilled his cup, took a sip, and continued “In Pegau, in 1664, died a young man at the hands, actually at the beak, of a gander which slashed the man’s wrists and he bled to death. That happened as part of a morbid form of people’s merriment: The gander was hung between two poles and young men contended on horses to take the poor animal down. The young man’s fate is the late gander’s revenge, I suppose.

In Geithain, a cry of dismay can be heard every once in a while. It stems from a young choir boy’s ghost who died when he and his friends wanted to steal the young of a jackdaw. He had climbed up to the nest but refused to share the offspring and so the other boys let him fall down the tower. A stone at the church commemorates this incident.

In Grimma, a wedding was cursed when attending students sang reworked funeral songs that send the bride to a grave and prophesied her resurrection. Three days later, the bride died from the plague, a few days later also the groom and the bride’s two brothers.

And the camp in Flößberg was filled with ghosts. All those who’d died there haunted the place because they’d been left to rot in a mass grave only a few feet away from the barracks. Most of them were Jews, one or two I knew a little closer but most of them I had just seen a couple of times in camp before I’d disappeared. When I came back the camp was hopelessly overcrowded, and the ghosts just made it more claustrophobic. But they’re all at rest now since the place’s become a proper memorial site. I think that’s a dead end for you.”

“Please leave it to us what is and what isn’t relevant” Tobi said coolly before extending a hand. “Nevertheless, thank you for your time and my sympathies for the loss of your loved one.”

Rossbusch just waved and led us outside. Tobi gave him his card in case there was anything Rossbusch would eventually remember. After I’d said goodbye as well and we sat in Tobi’s VW I said “I think he’s right, you know. That his ghost stories are a dead end for us.”

Tobi admitted through gritted teeth after a moment of hesitation “Yeah, I know. But I still think it’s a good idea to check them, just in case. We should drive there and have a look.”

“But not today. It’s late and I’m tired. I count on our ghost to not kill anyone during the night.” I all but whined and tried to stretch myself in the limited space that I had.

Tobi nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a long day. And I suppose you’re also hungry?“ He smiled.

I grinned and asked in feigned surprise “How do you know?”


	6. How To Catch A Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me till the end of this challenge - which writing a case fic was for me. Nightingale and Peter didn't make an appearance after all, but so far at least Nightingale will enter the stage in the spin-off to this story which is already in the making.

We were woken early the next morning by Tobi’s phone ringing. I stretched and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Tobi had gotten up and looked out of the window while talking lowly on the phone. I watched him. He furrowed his brow, then paled. Casting a quick glance towards me, he pulled out his note pad and scribbled down something. When he’d hung up he looked pained.

“What’s the matter?” I asked as I brewed coffee in the small kitchenette.

“That was the Chief. The dagger they found yesterday was stolen at a museum in Kent a week ago. She fears that they have to involve The Folly.”

“Why is that?” I would never admit it to Tobi but I was rather thrilled by this possibility. Still, I kept my cool and gave him a filled mug.

“The dagger was once part of a Folly raid in the demi-monde before World War II. They reckon that some radical souls of the fae or whatever have broken into the museum to get it back.”

I sipped at my coffee. “Now how and why did it get here?” That still didn’t make sense to me.

“I don’t know either. There must be a connection between our ghost and that dagger.” He raised his hands. “But that’s not our immediate problem. We still need the callback from our genius loci.” Just as he had said that, his phone rang again. “Withheld number”, he mumbled to himself and hesitated a second before answering.

I went to the en-suite bathroom to get dressed and brush my teeth. Figuring that it was the river goddess who had called him, we would have a stressful day ahead and should get going.

Tobi opened the door after I had answered his knock. “Speak of the devil. That was the genius loci. She wants to meet us in half an hour at the bridge where the river meets the lake. Apparently that’s only a couple of minutes from here.”

“Okay” I said and dried my hands on a towel. “Did she say anything else?”

He shook his head.

I nodded and walked past him so that he could get ready as well. He’d left his phone on the kitchenette and out of an impulse I picked it up. It wasn’t hard to unlock - for a police officer Tobi seemed to have a pretty slack understanding of data safety. I scrolled through his recently called numbers until I reached Bianca’s. He had saved her as Ghost Whisperer.

It was more a hazy undertone at the back of my mind than anything else but maybe the ghost who had set all this into motion might be close by when we met the river goddess. So it might come in handy to have a “ghost whisperer” as company. Maybe the goddess was also capable of speaking to them. But that didn’t matter at the moment. It mattered more that I now had an excuse for seeing Bianca again. Maybe I should have waited with that until all this here was over. But I couldn’t wait - more precisely, I didn’t want to wait.

So I texted her what we were up to.

His phone lay long untouched when Tobi came back from the bathroom. I innocently stood at the window overlooking the lake, it glistened promisingly in the early morning light, and turned when I heard him rummaging behind me.

“And people say women take long in the bathroom. You sure have taken your sweet time. Now we have to hurry” I playfully scolded him with a shake of my head and picked up my gear.

“Needed to shave” he muttered grouchily as he tied his boots.

Shave? The three hairs he had on his chin? I chuckled. He just shot me a look. But I had been serious about having to hurry. We got maybe five minutes left and I could only hope that Tobi knew where exactly the river met the lake.

He seemed to have finally realized that we were time-pressed because he started to jog down the stairs and didn’t stop when he reached ground-level. I grimaced. Yeah, people said that early-morning exercise was good for you. But _I_ had never gotten around that.

***

Her name was Pleia, but really, it should have been Nancy, or Mandy, or Peggy, or anything similarly cringeworthy because she looked so stereotypical East German it almost hurt. She wore a pink tank top over a white one, washed-out denim shorts and a big belt loosely around her hips. Her hair was dyed black, forming a big poof at the crown of her head, but otherwise being meticulously straightened out. To top off the cliché, a labret piercing sat on the right side of her upper lip, UGG boots warmed her feet despite the already high temperatures, and the nails on her left hand were like pink claws that would render me absolutely unable to do anything. The nails on her right hand were undone because the hand, as well as a good portion of her lower arm, was nonexistent.

When she noticed Sommer’s unconcealed curiosity, one of her eyebrows shot up. “Never seen an amputee before?”

“No, it’s not that?” Sommer said, realizing her stare and starting to squirm. “I was just wondering, how, I mean, what I’ve heard is that, uhm, your kind is very powerful?”

“Oh, you think I could stop anyone who wants to cut pieces off of me, darling? If only that was true! I tried. But it wasn’t enough. I sent floods, I dried out the groundwater, still they kept digging, polluting, and straightening me from 115km to 90. One day, I was so desperate that I ran up to one of the bulldozers but the driver didn’t see me and pushed ahead. I jumped out of the way, but lost my balance and the tracks ran over my arm. I bolted before anyone noticed me.”

My lips were a straight line as I was listening. Didn’t surprise me to hear this kind of story, still it always hit differently to see someone immediately afflicted by coal-mining. I used to have a rather non-critical stand towards it. My opinion could be basically summed up by “Well, they’re getting a nice new house paid by the coal company so why complain?” No, I’m not a fan of uninspired calendar mottos like “Home is where the heart is” and such crap. But I had never really understood why people were so insistent on staying in a place that was dying. I have changed my mind since then, though. Coal mining needs to be stopped, and no more places should be demolished for it.

Or people getting injured.

„Is there, uhm, any way we could help you with that?“ Sommer asked.

Pleia laughed dryly. „No, there is not. But the world is on a good way. Coal mining needs to be stopped earlier than 2038 but at least there is an end on the horizon. And all those young kids that start fighting for our climate - not all hope is lost. But I guess that’s not why you are here?”

“No” Winter said. “We’re investigating the presumed murder of a construction worker on the other side of the lake.” He glanced at me.

I responded with an unimpressed look. “Your colleague has asked me to be here. I’m not a civilian; I’m a consultant, so to speak, a consultant for ghosts.”

Pleia followed our exchange curiously. “You can hear them?”

I nodded.

She appraisingly shrugged her shoulders. “Haven’t met a mortal yet who’s able to. Though Andrea is not here.”

Winter looked at Sommer who just shrugged.

“Precautionary measure” she said.

Winter rolled his eyes. “Anyway. Have you witnessed anything about that murder?”

“No, but I’ve heard the ghosts talking about it. And from what I’ve heard is that this one’s different than the others. You’ve heard of those cases as well?”

The police officers nodded. “To what extent is that different?”

“I know it looks like the same modus operandi. But this dagger you’ve found - that’s not from here.”

“We know” Winter interrupted harshly. Sommer bumped his shoulder with hers for his impolite behaviour.

Pleia raised her eyebrow. “I don’t like to be interrupted.”

Oh! I felt her powers pulling at my will. And I wasn’t even the target here. I saw Winter writhing visibly upset under her influence.

“I’m sorry” he squeezed out.

She played with him for a second longer before she released him from her grip. “Environmental reasons” she said. “For the first three murders. For the most recent one, well, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe the Nightingale can tell you more.”

Winter sighed exasperatedly. “Please no” he muttered under his breath.

I didn’t know what they were talking about and I almost pitied Winter for everything he had to endure today even though I didn’t know why the name mentioned caused him pain or at least displeasure. But as I said, I _almost_ pitied him.

“And they’re not the only murders.” The river goddess tore me out of my thoughts with that shocking revelation. Involuntarily, I looked over my shoulder towards the lake. For a second, my imagination coloured it red, stained by all the blood that apparently had been spilled at its banks.

“What do you mean?” Sommer asked, visibly shocked.

“Those three are only the ones that Andrea has witnessed. The ghost community around here is pretty tight-knit, you know. They tell each other many things. And me. And they’ve told me about more murders in the past, mmh, 200 years?”

“And you think they’ve been all committed by one single ghost?” Winter sounded rather incredulous.

Pleia shrugged. “I suppose not every single one. But all that are somehow connected to the coal. As I said, environmental reasons. A militant environmental activist is what I think. And a very pissed one at that.“

„Incredible“ Sommer muttered.

„That’s not the word that I would use, sweetie. But it’s a pretty big number, yeah.”

“Any suggestions on the suspect? Uhm” Sommer flipped through her notes “he’s not that tall. He wears a wig, a white one, like English judges. His clothing is broquate, knickerbockers, heeled shoes. At least that’s what the vestigia told me, uh, us.”

Pleia laughed loud. “Not that tall, that’s good. Your description fits like only umpteen people in the past centuries. Good luck finding the culprit with this description. Is there anything else you want to know?”

Winter shook his head. “No, so far that’s all.”

“Then I’m gonna now head to Pödelwitz, the people there wanna safe their village and I’m gonna help them.” She waved and left us standing there.

A militant environmental activist in knickerbockers. I chuckled.

“So you think murders are funny now?” Winter growled.

Sommer and I both shot him a look. “No, of course not” I said firmly but absentmindedly. I was still thinking about the apparently aristocratic murderer. If he was so concerned about the lake, and nowhere else in the area, then there weren’t that many options. Basically just one.

“The Ernestis!” I exclaimed when it hit me.

“I beg your pardon?” Sommer asked and stepped a little closer.

„The Ernestis were the aristocratic family living here in Kahnsdorf. As the offences have only happened around this particular lake and no other in the region, there needs to be a connection between the suspect and the lake.”

“And of what interest could be dead people to the Ernestis?” Winter asked in disbelief, not entirely convinced by my reasoning.

I shrugged. “You are the police officers here, it’s your job to investigate that.” I tilted my head. “Do you still need my help? In case any ghosts turn up?”

Winter grated his teeth. “No, thank you, you can go.“

“Well, if you need me again, you have my number.” I cast Sommer another glance. She smiled at me and it flashed the dimples in her soft cheeks. Cute, but out of bounds. After opening the lock, I got on my bike.

***

I watched Bianca ride away a little longer than necessary. How her brown hair flowed over her bare shoulders. With a slick swerve she eluded an elderly couple that was animatedly talking to each other and used the entire width of the pathway to make the point clear.

Tobi coughed to get my attention. “So we have to research the entire family history of this ominous noble family?”

“Looks like it. I hope there are not too many of them. We should start at the manor in the village. I suppose that it was their residence. Maybe we can find a historian who knows a bit about the personalities of the royals.”

Tobi had taken out his phone. After a few swipes he announced “Kahnsdorf belongs to Neukieritzsch and they have a task force for history, spearheaded by a certain Hella Hallert.”

“Let’s call her then and agree on a meeting.”

***

The elderly lady - the article Tobi had found stated she was a little over sixty - had time for us in the early afternoon. We met in the Schillercafé right beside the manor. Hallert mentioned what I remembered again from the Wikipedia article about that alleged fateful meeting for Friedrich Schiller.

We sat down to apple pie and whipped cream. “Now tell me, officers, how can I help you?”

“Please tell us everything you know about the Ernesti family” I requested.

“Do I want to know why police officers from Trier came all the way to Kahnsdorf to enquire about this?” The alert eyes of the lady with the short grey hair twinkled mischievously.

Tobi and I exchanged a look. “If I may be frank with you, Mrs Hallert, you don’t want to know.”

She nodded. “Very well then. The estate was sold to the Ernestis in 1767. Johan Christian Gottlieb Ernesti soon became its owner when he inherited it from his aunt Sophie Friederike. Here are a few pictures.” She pulled a copper engraving out of an envelope showing a long-nosed man in profile. He wore a meticulously styled white wig with a low ponytail.

Tobi leaned into me. “Do you recognize him?” he whispered.

I shook my head. He surely fit some of the criteria I remembered vividly from my vestigia experience. But it didn’t click yet.

Hallert showed us a photograph of a painting depicting a middle-aged woman with blonde curly hair, bright green eyes and a red shawl draped around her shoulders. “Johann Christian was the man who enabled the meeting between Friedrich Schiller und Christian Gottfried Körner. You know about this?”

We nodded. “Do you have any more information that are not available on Wikipedia?”

“Of course I have. Our task force had been researching Kahnsdorf’s history for twenty years now. Johann Christian was a student and later professor at the university in Leipzig, he taught philology and theology. He fathered a son, Rudolf Gottlieb was born in 1780, two years before Johann Christian became the heir to Kahnsdorf estate. He died in 1802 aged only 47. Throughout all his life he’d been suffering from poor health.”

She took a sip from her tea. “Rudolf on the other hand was a robust man, infamous for having a short fuse. He also taught at the university, inherited his father’s professorship but in comparison to his father he was feared by the students. Townsfolk also disliked him greatly even though he managed to bring other significant writers and musicians to Kahnsdorf. Theodor Körner was nursed here after being injured in a battle during the Napoleon wars. But Körner noted on how easily agitated Rudolf could become and that he handed out duel threats as other people handed out greeting cards. Eventually, such a self-inflicted duel against a fellow professor was the end for him. He died here from an epee wound at the age of 47, just like his father.”

Hallert took out another picture from the envelope. She handed it over to Tobi who passed it to me. Suddenly I was back in the tent, smelling earth and sand as I lowered my head into the tracks. I exhaled deeply. “How can this be?” I uttered to no one in particular and I didn’t mean this unexpected flashback to the vestigia. When Pleia had said that the last murder hadn’t been performed by the ghost then why had I detected him there? Unless he and the person who had stolen the dagger had worked together, for whatever reason.

I turned to Hallert. “Would you mind leaving me and my colleague for a second? We need to have a chat in private.”

She shrugged. “Not at all. I wanted to use the restroom anyway.” She got up and walked out of the heavy oaken door leading to the hallway.

As soon as she was out of earshot Tobi basically shoved his face into mine. “You recognize _him_, don’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s the one I felt at the side of the incident.” Then I told him of my doubts. “It doesn’t make much sense” I concluded.

Tobi held two fingers into the air. “What we’ve gotta do now: wait what the Folly has to say about the dagger and have a look at the manor. Maybe we can find traces of Rudolf in the house. And soon hopefully a way to trap the ghost.”

Just as Hallert returned Tobi’s phone rang. She sat down while got up to walk towards the window on the other side of the small room. The heat wave gave us all a good grilling and so while the café had a lot of customers the majority of them sat outside and we were undisturbed in our investigations.

“Mrs Hallert, could you give us a tour through the mansion?”

She hunched her shoulders. “Theoretically, I could. Though we would have to speak to the owner first. There’s a restaurant now on the ground floor of the mansion. Here’s the big ‘but’, though: The current building was erected in 1903, long after Rudolf had died.”

I pressed my lips together and looked sideways like in that TV show. (I’ve never seen it but this move was still somehow ingrained into my habits by now.) Of course, it couldn’t be easy.

Tobi came back from the phone call. We both looked at him expectantly. “Mrs Hallert, thank you very much for your time and your information. They were very useful to us. If we have any more questions, we can come back to you, yes?” It was clear that he was trying to get rid of her as quickly as possible.

She got the hint, got up and left a crumpled five euro bill beside her tea cup. “Of course, officer. I’m always happy to help. Goodbye and take care.”

When she had left Tobi sat down and leaned back, interlacing his fingers. “The Chief had just called me. Nightingale was apparently very eager to learn about the lost dagger being found even though he tried to hide it. At least that’s what the Chief said. He is on his way from London already since she told me the news about the dagger this morning. She’s surprised herself that he chose to come over himself and not sending someone.”

“So that means that the dagger has some kind of explosive potential?”

“Seems like it. But that’s not our immediate concern.”

“No, it isn’t. I had hoped to track down Rudolf in the masonry but Hallert said that was only built at the beginning of the last century.”

When I said this his eyes lit up. “How old do you reckon _this_ house here is?”

The interior was nothing to go by but the white painted walls were massive and crooked and the ceiling looked genuinely worn and faded. He flagged down the waitress. “Do you know how old this building is?”

“Late 17th century, if I remember correctly.”

“And could we have a look around the house?” he asked innocently, conspicuous inconspicuously flashing his police ID.

She raised her eyebrows. “If you don’t take too long.” With that, she hurried back to the counter to get more cream tart. Tobi and I exchanged a look. We paid for our coffee and apple pie and crept slowly towards the stairs leading up to the first floor.

“Tobi, in case we encounter the ghost, do you have an idea how to deal with them?” I whispered as we snuck up step for step.

“You can trap them in a rose jar.”

“And you have one at hand?”

Tobi stopped moving up and turned to me. “Uhm...”

“That’s not the answer I wanted to hear. Is that rose jar a special magical jar?”

“As far as I can remember, no, it’s a simple glass bottle. Bulbous with a narrow bottleneck. And you need a cork of course.”

“Mmh...” I remembered the decoration in the hall. “Wait here for me” I said to him and ran back down the stairs. I slipped past the waitress on her way out to the terrace, ducked into the hall and snitched the green bottle from between the arrangement of straw bales and old farming equipment. On my way back through the café room I took a detour to the counter and swiped a cork from the bin.

With the bottle held tightly in my left fist I closed up to Tobi who was waiting in a small nook halfway up the stairs. “Like that?” I held it up.

He nodded, then motioned me forward. We took the last steps up the stairs. The air was sticky and dust floated in the sunrays that poked through the shutters.

A big clutter behind our backs let us both jump. We slowly turned. An icy breeze drifted past our faces.

“Do you think he’s here?” I barely dared to whisper.

“I reckon that” Tobi said equally quiet. “We should be careful. I don’t want us to be his next victims.”

I nodded. Neither did I. “Any plans on how to trap the ghost?”

“None!” someone suddenly exclaimed right beside my ear in a voice that painfully sounded like Martin Semmelrogge’s. We both flinched and tumbled over each other. Above us floated the guy I had seen in the vestigia with a devilishly distorted facial expression.

“Rudolf von Ernesti?” I asked in an attempt to negotiate.

He paraded before us, half a meter above the creaky plank floor. “The very one.”

“What bothered you so much about the people that you had to kill them?” Tobi asked. He got up from the floor, dusted his bottom and helped me up as well.

“Bothered? They had offended me! This filth! Dared to mutilate this beautiful landscape with their shovels and their bucket excavators!” he thundered.

“But what about the workers flooding the lake? The ones building the chalets? Isn’t a lake a beautiful thing?”

He batted my question away as if it was an annoying fly. “Beautiful? No, it’s merely a manifestation of modern megalomania, believing that they can shape nature as they please. Exploiting it for tourism, luring the lower class to a place that was once only reserved for the cultured. Schiller was here, goddamnit!”

I could hardly believe what I heard. An aristocratic environmentalist, don’t make me laugh.

While Ernesti was still parading like a cockalorum, Tobi and I exchanged a glance. “Do you know how to prepare a ghost trap?” I asked him out of the corner of my mouth.

He nodded just a fraction.

I pulled the bottle from behind my back, thankfully it was still intact, and handed it to him.

He held the bottle tightly with both hands and muttered something. I wondered what kind of spells he used here and I hoped that I would learn them myself soon enough. Then, abruptly, he thrust it towards the ghost.

A loud bang shook the shudders and even let the modern windows clink in their frames. Dust exploded everywhere. I shielded my eyes and turned towards the wall to protect myself.

A hair-raising scream echoed through the hall, then there was a loud noise that sounded as if air was sucked into a vacuum cleaner, ten times amplified, and then a wet plop.

As quick as the commotion had come it was gone again, now only absolute silence was drumming in my ear. I popped an eye open and saw Tobi rushing towards the bottle, covering it with all his body weight and plugging it with the cork.

Muffled, Ernesti’s complaints got through the glass. “Pah, and I thought the police were serving the reputable!”

“No sir, we’re serving the law” Tobi said dryly and picked up the bottle. He looked to me. “I’m gonna call the Chief and ask her what to do with it.” He slightly shook the bottle which earned him an indignant knock from Ernesti.

I nodded. “You do that. I also have a call to make.”

Tobi just raised his eyebrows.

***

“It’s a pretty beautiful place here” Vanessa remarked as we were gazing over the lake.

“If it wasn’t for all those murderous ghosts.” I chuckled.

She nodded. “True.”

Then there was a long stretch of silence. Suddenly, I felt a somewhat feathery touch at my hand. After a second of consideration, I hooked my pinky finger into hers. “I wish we had met under different circumstances” I said quietly.

“Not during a case?”

“You not being a police officer.”

She laughed, the sound let my stomach tighten in a knot. It was such a sweet giggle that I wished for her not only being not a copper but also not living as far away as Trier.

“That’s not gonna change any time soon” she said, almost apologetically.

“What a pity.” I hadn’t expected anything else.

“So, uhm, how far do your objections towards getting involved with a copper go?” she asked in a cautious tone, as if she was up to something specific.

I pricked my ears. Now it was my turn to ask warily “What do you mean?”

She turned to me. Her hazel eyes shone golden in the setting sun. Bashfully, she pushed a curl of her unruly brown hair behind her ear. “Well, what do you say about a kiss goodbye?”

She blushed - and so did I. Boy, this was becoming more serious the longer we stood here. Screw it, I thought, if I fell harder for her now then I simply had to put up with long-distance pining.

Being considerably taller than Vanessa, I had to bend down to kiss. I tilted my head, so did she, and her lips brushed against mine.

It was delicate, like a butterfly. She touched my cheek and smiled into the kiss.

We stepped back in the same instance. She still smiled at me. “I wanted this for quite a while” she admitted and scratched the back of her neck. “Even though it’s by no means appropriate.”

I shrugged. „I think I’m the last person to care about what’s appropriate or not.” I inhaled, thoughts racing in every possible direction in milliseconds. But they all reached the same conclusion. “But I fear that we won’t see each other again.”

She sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right. It’s not exactly a puddle jump to Kahnsdorf. And you won’t change your attitude towards police officers in the near future, will you?”

I shook my head. “Supposedly not, no.“ But I also didn’t want to let her go just like that. Before I could think much about it, I took her face into my hands and kissed her again. This time hard and demanding, channelling some of my frustration about not seeing her again into the kiss.

She gasped when I let her go as if she was coming up for air after a dive in the lake. “Sometimes the world is a cruel place” she muttered breathlessly “that it won’t let us have a single chance together.”

I nodded, suddenly not able to speak anymore.

She took my hand and squeezed it. “Take care Bianca”. She gave me a peck on the cheek.

“You too. You’ll always meet twice in life, as people say.”

She laughed. “I hope you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on authenticity: Johann Christian and Sophie Friederike were real people, Rudolf was not - at least he's not historically documented. Hella Hallert on the other hand was also real; she unexpectedly died in December 2019, survived by her mother, children and grandchildren.


End file.
